


"No One to Tell Us No"

by stillscape



Category: Aladdin (1992), Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 14:29:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape/pseuds/stillscape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Aladdin AU that no one asked for. <b>ashisfriendly</b> sent me a three-sentence AU fic prompt and somehow this happened. Thanks to diaphenia, throwingpens, and craponaspatula for the brainstorming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"No One to Tell Us No"

 

It was just another day in the palace. Just another day wondering whether all the gold he was meant to be accounting for had disappeared into the pockets of crooked guards, crooked cooks, crooked attendants...or whether it had merely vanished into thin air, as so much gold seemed to do these days.

Ben paused to wipe the sweat from his brow, since blinking it away was no longer sufficient. Agrabah was not getting any cooler. Today, like most other days, was unreasonably hot. Today was so hot that he had started seeing mirages. Like attractive blonde women. In his doorway.

“I need all the gold you’ve got,” said the mirage.

Ben blinked again. Mirages didn’t usually talk, did they? He decided to give this one a straight answer anyway.

“There isn’t any gold.”

The mirage scowled at him. “Very funny.”

“Look around.” He gestured at the empty walls, the empty chests, the empty everything. “We don’t have any gold.”

“What? Of course we have gold. This is the palace treasury, isn’t it?”

“Do you see gold?” he asked, gesturing at the empty storage behind him. “Or other precious metals? Anything that looks like a coin? Gemstones?”

The mirage (was she a mirage? Why was a mirage arguing with him? Maybe she was a real woman after all. She smelled nice, like flowers, and he was pretty sure mirages didn’t smell) screwed up her nose, pursed her lips, and crossed her arms over her chest. “If this is your idea of a joke--”

Ben pressed a hand to his forehead, using his thumb to massage his temple. “It’s not a joke. Do you see any--”

The mirage--no, woman, she was definitely a real woman--stiffened and whipped her head around. “What was that?”

“I didn’t hear anything.” Ben felt slightly dizzy, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. Certainly not because when the woman spun, she’d sent waist-length blonde hair flying in every direction, exposing her neck and back. It was all-- _wow_.

He was definitely suffering from some sort of mild heat stroke.

She took a few steps back from the door. This proved to be a wise decision, as a second woman entered the room, clad in rich velvet robes despite the heat, a snake’s-head staff in her left hand. As usual, not a strand of her icy blonde hair was out of place. Tammy the First, the royal vizier...and her damn parrot.

A bit of Ben’s last cup of tea rose in his throat, and he swallowed it back down. It was best not to make eye contact with Tammy. She came here most days to survey his work, a task that consisted largely of _tsk_ -ing over his scrolls, running a long, slender finger over the bare shelves, and expressing her disappointment in his inability to make gold appear from nowhere. Plus, the parrot usually threw in a few barbs of her own. Quite frankly, Ben was more disappointed in his inability to keep gold from disappearing mysteriously in the middle of the night than he was in his inability to materialize it during the day. At least nothing ever disappeared while he was in the treasury himself. Even if it had, he wasn’t an armed guard, so. The point was, he told himself every time Tammy left the treasury, _this wasn’t his fault_.

Tammy the First’s gaze landed on Ben, and she opened her mouth to speak. But then she spotted the other woman, and cleared her throat instead.

“Ah,” said the vizier. “Princess Leslie. There you are. The Sultan has been worried about you.”

Wait. _Princess_?

“The Sultan thinks he can just keep me locked up all day,” she muttered.

“Women should neither be seen nor heard,” clucked the parrot, in her usual monotone.

The vizier pursed her thin lips and glanced around. “It’s for your own safety, Princess. There’s no need for you to visit these...nobodies. Whatever you need, I shall make sure someone… _suitable_ provides it for you.”

“Yeah,” squawked the parrot. “Not this guy. He’s too lame to be allowed to live.”

“What I need,” said the princess, placing one small fist on each hip, “is something to _do_.”

The vizier placed a hand on the small of the princess’s back, though she quickly sidestepped him. Tammy the First curled a long, gnarled finger, gesturing as she melted back into the hallway. “There is no need for you to speak in my presence. I have received word that a suitor will soon arrive from the north. We shall evaluate him together.”

“Just stay away from the Sultan,” Princess Leslie muttered, almost under her breath.

Ben wasn’t sure why he did it, whether it was because everything about the royal vizier always rubbed him the wrong way or because something about the princess was rubbing him the _right_ way, despite her anger (not _literally_ , and no, nope, that wasn’t it at all, he was not having inappropriate thoughts about Princess Leslie), but he swiped a small bag of gold coins from his work table and took a step towards her.

“What are you doing?”

“Do you trust me?” He met her eyes, which were enormous and blue and puzzled.

“What?”

“Do you trust me?”

“No.”

“Whatever. Just take this.” Quickly, he pressed the bag into her palm.

She gave one final glance around the room and its utter lack of wealth. “I still think there’s more gold you’re hiding from me,” she spat, bestowing a final glare upon him. Then she tucked the bag into her top, fluffed her hair, and sped down the hallway after the royal vizier.

A familiar light weight landed on his shoulder and nudged him, chattering away as usual. Where had he even been? Stealing food from the palace kitchens again, probably, or trying to get into the maids’ bedrooms.

“Let’s just get back to work,” he told the monkey, who made a disgusted face and jumped onto a nearby shelf.

As if an unexpected encounter with a very important person didn’t make for a weird enough day, when Ben left the palace that evening, he found himself pulled into the creepiest shadows he’d ever seen by a very old, very hunchbacked woman whose dental hygiene was very questionable. Then he got called _a diamond in the rough_ (what did that even mean?) and was taken to the middle of the desert, somewhat against his will.

By the time a hundred-foot raccoon’s head rose from the sand, Ben had given up on making sense out of anything. He nodded mutely at the old woman’s inane instructions to “touch nothing but the lamp” and entered the cave, still trying not to think about the princess, though the city had talked of little else in recent memory. She had to be married by her next birthday, which was approaching soon. So far all suitors had proved...unsuitable. Ben had little interest in palace gossip, but he’d been unable to completely avoid it over the years. Certainly, he’d heard plenty of discussion about how the princess was haughty, proud, stubborn, and entirely too intelligent for her own good...

Oh, there was the lamp. It was at the end of a long, long passage.

Maybe if he’d been paying more attention to his surroundings--good lord, he should have been, they were pretty spectacular--he could have kept the monkey from treating himself to a large handful of rubies.

The old woman had been right; they didn’t want to touch anything but the lamp. It was too late for that now, though. A few terrifying moments of rushing sand and flowing lava, and he was trapped. He was trapped in a secret cave of treasures with a monkey and a very old oil lamp, and he was almost certainly going to die here, of starvation or dehydration, whichever came first. Dehydration, probably. Certainly, he could have thought of more pleasant ways to go.

“I told you not to touch anything, Tom,” he spat. The monkey just squeaked, widening his eyes in mock innocence.

The lamp had a spot of dust on it. Since Ben had nothing better to do (except yell at the monkey and wait for his own impending doom), he pulled out one corner of his vest and wiped the spot off.

He felt a sudden rush of wind.

“That living space,” said a blue thing, which had definitely not been in the cave twenty seconds ago, “is _phenomenally_ cramped. It leaves me very little room to do tricep dips.”

Of all the strange things that had happened to Ben today, finding himself the owner of a magic lamp was maybe the strangest. Maybe. Escaping from the cave on a friendly (if clumsy) flying carpet was pretty strange too.

(But no. In retrospect, the strangest part had probably been when the genie, unprompted by him, had patted the cave walls and assured the cave that it could be anything in life that it put its mind to, and the cave opened up and let the carpet fly them out. Who knew you could reason with a magic cave? Who even knew magic caves _existed_? Who knew _genies_ existed? It was like something out of one of those fantasy stories he was probably too old to still be reading.)

As he lay back on the straw mattress in the bare, insect-infested room he rented for a pittance, he wondered what it would feel like to wield wealth and power.

And then the next morning he woke up and found he’d been turned into a prince.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” he muttered.

The genie clasped two hands to Ben’s shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “This is your first wish. You specifically asked to be a prince.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You said it in your sleep. I heard you very clearly.”

Ben flinched. The genie had been watching him sleep? “Don’t I have to be conscious to make a wish?”

“Now, I can’t make the princess fall in love with you,” warned the genie, ignoring Ben completely. “That’s outside the scope of my powers. But you are absolutely worthy of her. And the heart always finds a way.”

“Uh-huh.”

The genie grinned and gave Ben a huge thumbs up. “Go get her, buddy! I believe in you!” And he conjured up a healthy, yet somehow also strangely delicious, breakfast.

The rest of Ben’s day didn’t go nearly as well as breakfast had. The royal vizier might have recognized him. She might have realized he hadn’t turned up in the treasury. Or not. It didn’t really matter. It was the least of his problems, really.

That evening, the genie clapped a muscular blue hand to Ben’s shoulder. “So that strategy was not optimal. We’ll try again. Just be yourself,” he said, literally turning into a bee to drive the point home before he flew back into the lamp. “ _Bee_ yourself. You are a _phenomenal_ prince.”

“Right,” said Ben. He swallowed. It was the hat. The enormous prince hat was throwing him. He took it off. But he needed the hat to hide the lamp, so he put it back on again, lamp clanging uncomfortably against his skull. Maybe it was these long sleeves--if he could just roll them up--

Tom shook his head (sending his ears flapping in every direction), took Ben’s left cuff in his trunk, and unrolled it. Then he did the right. Then he delicately blew on a tiny speck of dust that had settled on Ben’s shoulder.

“Fine.” Ben jammed his hands in his pockets. “I still don’t think there was anything wrong with my old clothes.”

The elephant shook his head again, and attempted to demonstrate what Ben supposed was dancing, or the proper body language for attracting a beautiful princess...or maybe he was just mocking. Whatever it was supposed to be, it had worked better when Tom was a monkey.

The flying carpet nudged Ben in the back and unrolled itself in midair. With a deep breath, he climbed aboard, seating himself in the middle of the purple and blue plaid. Gross. The carpet was sticky with fig juice, and while it had shaken off some of the dust from a thousand years of captivity, it was still full of dust and crumbs.

“Can we go slowly, please?” he muttered, as the carpet took off to Tom’s farewell trumpet. It gave a displeased shake, causing him to clutch at its edges, but it continued at a more leisurely drift.

He wasn’t trying to put off visiting the princess, not necessarily. He just needed some time to think about what he was going to say to her. How he might possibly be able to explain that arriving unannounced in her palace with trumpet fanfare and seventy-five golden camels hadn’t been his idea.

But he couldn’t. Could he? He definitely couldn’t mention the genie. He couldn’t explain that he wasn’t really a prince, just a lowly peon who worked in the palace treasury. That although gold was a prudent investment, displaying that wealth in camel shape was both inefficient and kind of obnoxious. That if he was really a prince, he’d use his golden camels to provide services for the less fortunate. Because princesses didn’t think that way. Princesses _liked_ obnoxious, unnecessary displays of wealth.

Or did they?

She had yelled at him for parading his menagerie across the palace lawn in the middle of the musical recital she’d arranged for a group of local children. And even if the children had been thrilled with the sixty elephants, lions galore, the bears and tigers--and even if the brass band had picked up where her lone lute player had left off after Tom had trampled him, and even if the forty fakirs and cooks and bakers and birds that warbled on key had provided quite the festive atmosphere, in the end--he had, in point of fact, ruined her event.

And she had yelled at him when he wasn’t a prince, or pretending to be one--when she’d unexpectedly shown up in the unfortunately sparse treasury room, demanding to be given gold for reasons she wouldn’t specify. He’d stood his ground, although she was the princess (even if he hadn’t realized it at first) and he was nobody. After all, there wasn’t any gold--anyone could see there wasn’t any gold--and what did a princess actually need to buy, anyhow? Everybody knew she never left the palace grounds.

For the first time, it occurred to Ben that the princess might have been looking for gold because she wanted to hire more musicians than a single lute player. And maybe provide some refreshments or something.

So he’d ruined her recital. Twice. And now he was flying a carpet to her bedroom in the middle of the night to talk to her? What the hell did he think he was going to accomplish?

“You know what--” he started, intending to turn around. But the carpet shook its front, stiffened, and picked up speed.

Well, at least he’d be able to make a quick getaway if he needed to. If the carpet agreed.

***

“It’s not fair,” Princess Leslie told her best friend as she threw herself onto the large cushion in her tower bedroom. Since her best friend (well, her only friend) was a miniature horse, he couldn’t respond except to nicker softly and nudge his velvety nose into her hand. “Oh, Sebastian. I feel so trapped. I don’t want to marry any old arrogant prince. This one’s no different from the others. They all just waltz up to the palace door, distract the sultan with a bunch of grilled meat, and act like their mere presence is enough to sweep me off my feet. Like I’m not a real person, trapped in a real palace, with real feelings...”

Especially not if the prince had ruined her event. She couldn’t leave the palace, not ever--why did he have to show up during one of the only times she was allowed to let the community _in_? What objection did he have to her helping people as best she could? Palace concerts were one of the few services she could provide, even if that stupid jerkface in the treasury room had only given her a tiny handful of gold and she’d hardly even been able to hire a single lute player (where _was_ all the gold, anyway?). Next he’d probably drive a bunch of elephants through the patch of palace grounds she’d set aside for a public garden...

Li’l Sebastian whinnied, flattening his ears against his head and thrusting his nose towards her open windows.

“What is it, boy?”

 _It_ turned out to be the prince. The dumb, arrogant prince. He was hovering just past her balcony.

“This palace has feelings?” he asked.

The idea that Prince Ben had been hovering outside, listening to her private conversation with her miniature horse, was enough to make Leslie’s blood boil. It boiled right up into her face, which suddenly felt very hot. She hoped she wasn’t turning too pink.

“It might! There’s a lot of history in this one.”

Wait. He was _hovering_?

Leslie took a few deep breaths. Then, slowly, she took a few steps towards the balcony’s edge. “How are you doing that?”

“What?”

“Standing in midair.”

The prince shrugged.

“No, seriously. I want an answer.”

He sighed, seemingly contemplating something. Then he squared his shoulders. “Do you trust me?”

Leslie felt her eyes narrow. Suddenly, the prince looked strangely familiar, somehow. “What?”

“Do you trust me?”

In any other moment, she would have responded that it wasn’t that she didn’t _trust_ the prince so much as she didn’t have faith in him. But in this moment, as she squinted at him in the summer moonlight, she did.

She nodded, and he held out a hand, which she took. Soon she was stepping over the balcony railing, onto--

“A flying carpet?” It felt solid under her feet, but a bit unsteady. “I thought those only existed in legend.”

“I thought so too, until I found this one.” His hand was warmer than she’d expected, but not unpleasantly so, and his grip gentle but firm. “Um, you might want to sit down.”

“Right.” She lowered herself to a seated position, probably not as gracefully as a princess should, but whatever. She wasn’t trying to impress him. He sat down too.

Their knees touched for an instant, before the prince quickly scooted backwards.

“So,” he said. “Where do you want to go?”

“Go?” She felt a little silly asking the question, but... “Like, around the palace?”

“Well, sure, but--Princess, it’s a flying carpet. It can pretty much go anywhere in the world.”

The carpet nodded. Enthusiastically, she thought, before she became too swept up in fantasies of escaping the palace walls to wonder how she knew a carpet was nodding enthusiastically.

“I don’t know where to go,” she said. “I’ve never been allowed outside the palace walls.”

The carpet began drifting upwards, lifting them over the trees. Being this high was a little scary, but it was also exhilarating--especially since they were getting closer and closer to the city itself, and freedom.

“I haven’t traveled much either,” said the prince.

“Where are you from, anyway?”

“Oh. Uh, just--you know, another kingdom. Around here. Not too far.”

“So let’s go there.”

The carpet twisted its front around, as if to ask for directions.

Ben shook his head, making his hat wobble. “Hey, I have a better idea. How about we just fly somewhere nice? Scenic?”

“Okay,” Leslie agreed, though she couldn’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to show off their own kingdom. She’d show off Agrabah, if she was ever allowed to accompany visitors into its streets.

They received a thumbs-up from the carpet’s tassel, and zipped off--over the palace walls, over Agrabah’s wealthiest neighborhoods, over the marketplace and the slums, and finally over the city gates and into the vast, empty desert.

Ben tapped her shoulder. “Princess, look.”

The carpet spun around so that they faced Agrabah, her city. The palace loomed large and ghostly over all of it. She couldn’t quite believe that after an entire lifetime of confinement, she’d traveled so far in only a few minutes. And she couldn’t quite believe how beautiful it all was. Moonlight skittered off the golden domes of the palace, and Leslie’s breath caught in her throat.

“It looks a lot different from here,” she said, softly. “Especially where the sun’s setting, over there. Look at how beautiful the colors are.”

“They are nice. But that’s actually pollution from the _gaz_ factory.”

Leslie shot him a look. “How do you know where the _gaz_ factory is?”

“Oh. Uh, someone in the palace mentioned it earlier.”

“All those people,” she sighed. “How many of them do you think have ever seen the city like this?”

Ben shrugged. “Probably none of them.”

“I wish they could.”

“You wouldn’t rather keep the view private?”

“No!” Leslie sat up as straight as she possibly could. “Rulers should share their wealth with the people. There’s no point in having lots of gold if you don’t use it to make people’s lives better. That includes sharing views. Don’t you think so?”

She turned her head to catch the prince giving her a funny look. She knew that look. All her suitors wore it just before they declared her impossible, and stomped out of the palace, entourages in tow. So probably, she thought, she ought to brace for impact, in case this prince dumped her in mid-air. At least the sand should provide a fairly soft landing.

But he didn’t push her off the carpet. He just kept peering at her with that funny look on his face.

“I do think so,” he said. “But I’ve never met any rulers who did.”

“Well, how do you rule your kingdom?” she demanded.

“With iron purse strings, I’m afraid. It’s a very small kingdom.” Grimacing slightly, Ben adjusted his hat. “Princess, I’m really sorry about the recital. I didn’t know you were doing that. I certainly didn’t mean to send a parade through it.”

“Your elephant shot the Sultan in the back of the head, with a peanut.”

“I know.”

“You dropped an ice sculpture in the middle of my goldfish pond.”

“I know.”

“Where’d you even get ice? It’s not exactly common around here.”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t know. But I didn’t mean to ruin your event, I would never--things just got out of hand.”

It was hard to believe any prince worth his salt would have so little control over his entourage. Why did she think he was telling the truth? Maybe it was the apology. She couldn’t remember any previous potential suitors apologizing to her.

“Well,” she said, watching his face closely, “make it up to me.”

“How?”

“You have musicians in your employ. Help me throw another recital for the kids.”

A tiny smile played at the corners of Prince Ben’s mouth. “I’d like that.”

“Then we’ll do it. Soon.” She held out her right hand at shoulder height, expecting him to kiss it. But he took it in his instead, and shook, as though they were partners now. His hand was much larger than hers, she noticed. And why did she feel so warm?

“So, uh...” The prince cleared his throat. “Now what?”

Buoyed by the night air, and the funny tingling in her abdomen, and the knowledge that her father would never check on her room in the middle of the night, Leslie turned her gaze from Agrabah to what was beyond, and decided that as much as she loved her city, well...

“Let’s go somewhere else. Where can we go?”

Ben shrugged. “How about the sea?”

“The sea?” She’d read about the sea, heard tales about it, but it had always seemed so far away; an impossible destination for a princess trapped in her own palace. “Can we really get there?”

“I think so. It might take a while. Carpet?”

The carpet saluted them and sped off into the night, accelerating so quickly that Leslie lost her balance. As she and Prince Ben realigned themselves, she decided that even with the funny look still there, his face wasn’t so terrible.

Soon they were up, up almost to the clouds, the magic carpet swooping and dipping through the night sky. Away from the city and its fires, at this height, the stars were extra bright and magical. Leslie could have sworn there were more stars than usual, too, an endless blanket of tiny diamonds shimmering only for them. She shivered with the pleasure of it all and hugged her arms close to her chest.

“Are you cold?”

Leslie shook her head. “No, it feels good.” But she leaned back a little anyway, so that her bare arm grazed Ben’s sleeve. Would he try to keep her warm?

He did.

She let out a small, happy sigh, and let herself snuggle into the arm he had around her shoulder. Improper behavior for an unmarried princess, but who would ever find out? Besides, she thought, how was she supposed to know who she wanted to marry if she didn’t get to try this stuff out first? What if she got married to a prince, and he turned out to be terrible at kissing? Or what if she tried to kiss her prince for real, and it turned out she didn’t know how? Leslie hadn’t kissed anyone since she was a child, and sneaking little pecks on the cheek under the orchard trees when her tutor’s back had been turned--well, that hardly counted.

They soared over a river with hundreds of boats, through another desert, past what must have been the pyramids she’d only heard about because sometimes she eavesdropped when caravan merchants came to call. They flew alongside a flock of birds, then rushed nearly to the ground to gallop alongside a herd of wild horses that reminded her of very large Sebastians. Finally, they soared over a magnificent expanse of deepest blue.

“The sea?” Leslie leaned over as far as she felt safe, and the carpet dipped lower, until she could feel a salty spray on her face.

“Yeah, I guess.” The spray must have been hitting Ben’s face, too. She wondered how it felt to him. How it felt on his lips. “I’ve never seen it either.”

“Really?”

By now, they’d slowed to a comfortable drift. A small island loomed in front of them--small, but inhabited; she could make out a garden path and a white marble gazebo. The carpet gently came to a halt over a well-manicured lawn just past the sandy shore. Aware that her knees were cramping something fierce, Leslie stood up and stretched. Should she look at Ben, or the sea? Sea, probably. She pulled off her shoes, threw them next to the carpet, and headed down to the water, relishing the feeling of sand between her toes.

“So you’re a prince with a magic carpet,” she called over her shoulder, “and you don’t just fly here all the time?”

Ben caught up with her, shoes in hand. “I told you,” he said, a little stiffly, “I haven’t traveled much.”

“You have a flying--”

“It’s a somewhat recent acquisition.” The carpet was leaving them alone now, she noticed. “Like...yesterday?”

“Yesterday,” Leslie repeated, the word sounding blank in her ears. She continued down towards the water. “How’d you come across a flying carpet yesterday?”

She was all the way up to her ankles before she realized Ben hadn’t followed her.

“Come on, prince,” she called. He shook his head, and that was when she realized he looked kind of nauseous. “Wait, are you airsick?”

Ben walked almost all the way up to her, just to the edge of where the waves washed up. “No,” he said. “I’m not airsick, but...Princess, we need to talk about something.”

“We are talking.”

“I’m not a prince.”

That didn’t make any sense. “Of course you are.” She held out a hand, gesturing for him to join her. The water was nice and warm. “You have a hat.”

“I do have a hat,” he agreed. Then he took off the hat, reached inside, and pulled something out. “I also have a magic lamp. When I rub it, a genie comes out, and--”

A familiar sinking feeling hit Leslie’s stomach, followed--as it always was--by an equally familiar rush of anger. “Oh, very funny,” she told him. “You know, I’ve been rejected by a lot of princes, but most of them have the decency just to do it at the palace and then leave, not--not fly me to the middle of wherever we are and make up some story about--”

“I’m not making it up.” He took a few more steps into the water and held out the old lamp to her. While Leslie was pretty sure this was some kind of excuse, she did love historical artifacts, so she took the lamp and examined it.

It seemed completely ordinary.

“Just take me back to Agrabah,” she said, giving him a wide berth on her way out of the water. “Fly me back home, and then you can go back to whichever kingdom you come from.”

“Agrabah,” he said.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

“Princess, I live in Agrabah. That’s where I’m from.”

“Right. That’s a good one. We don’t have any princes, which is sort of a problem, because the laws say if there’s no male heir, which there isn’t, then I have to marry a prince by my next birthday--”

“Leslie.” Something about the way he said her name made her stop in her tracks. “Will you--will you just look?”

“Fine,” she muttered, turning around.

It was the first time she’d seen Prince Ben without the hat on. Bare-headed, he looked...strangely familiar, again, especially when he raised a hand to his forehead and rubbed his thumb over one temple.

And then he rubbed the lamp. Something erupted from it, a big, blue...something.

“As always,” said the blue thing, “it is great to be out of that lamp. Stretching feels phenomenal!”

It was possible, Leslie thought, that she would never stop staring. “Oh, my god. Is that a genie? That’s really a genie.”

“It’s really a genie,” Ben confirmed. The genie had begun what looked to be a long, complicated series of exercises, right there on the beach. Ben glanced over at it, then stepped closer to her, catching both her hands in his. He spoke quickly, like he needed to get the words out while the genie was distracted. “Listen. The genie is responsible for all the prince stuff. None of that is real. I’m not a real prince, I--”

Leslie swallowed. Now she understood why he looked familiar. “You work in the treasury in the palace.”

“I do.”

“And you’re pretending to be a prince because--” She snatched her hands away and folded her arms across her chest. “Ben, I’m not some prize to be won.”

He looked flabbergasted. “I know that. But you’re a princess. There was no other way to even begin to get to know you.”

“You lied to me.”

“I wish I hadn’t.”

“You know where I live. You could have just said something.”

Ben’s brow furrowed. “As a commoner? You know I couldn’t have. Only princes are allowed to socialize with the princess. There’s a _rule_. I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

Frustrated though she was with him, Leslie knew only too well that he was right.

So she’d finally found a prince, a good one--one who didn’t think she was a prize, one who shared some of her ideas about government and treated her like a real person and was even awfully handsome--and he wasn’t a prince at all.

The irony was not lost on her.

And the words “Screw it” were on the tip of her tongue when she felt a massive yet oddly light hand on her shoulder.

“Princess Leslie!” said the genie, pointing at her chest with his free hand. “I do hope you are enjoying your evening with Prince Benjamin. He is literally the best prince I’ve ever known.”

Ben shook his head. “Genie, don’t. I told her it’s not real.”

“Oh.” The genie sat in the sand, somehow, though he didn’t have legs. The lamp was in the sand. Good enough, Leslie supposed. She joined him, and so did Ben, and soon enough the magic carpet came flying over too. “Well,” the genie continued, “honesty is very important.”

“Funny you should say that,” Ben muttered, “since you’re the one who insisted on trying to turn me into a prince in the first place...”

A thought occurred to Leslie. “What kind of powers do you have?” she asked the genie. “Could you get rid of the rule?”

The genie took a deep breath, letting his shoulders sag momentarily before he sat up again, ramrod straight. “I could do that, if Ben wishes.”

“There you go.” Leslie nudged her not-prince-after-all in the arm. “You can wish for the rule to go away.”

“But,” said the genie, “the Sultan could reverse it almost at once. It’s his rule, not mine, and I have no power to keep him from reinstating it.”

They all thought for a few moments. Leslie watched the waves rolling out and in and decided that, above all else, her head hurt.

The genie enveloped them both in a simultaneous uncomfortable hug. “I’ll leave you two in peace while you decide what to do,” he told them, before he disappeared back into his lamp.

“We should go back,” Ben muttered, rubbing his arm where the genie had squeezed it.

Briefly, Leslie considered the past twenty-four hours, and decided that there was something she definitely needed to figure out before they returned home.

“One thing first,” she told him. And she grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the trees.

“Leslie, what are you--” He stopped when she shot a glance at where they’d just been standing. The genie might have gone back in his lamp, but she wanted to be a safe distance from him anyway.

Now that they were here, she really had no idea how to say it. But they were here, alone, so she looked straight into Ben’s eyes and hoped the words would take care of themselves.

“If you were really a prince,” she started, “or if I wasn’t a princess--or if there wasn’t a rule--how would you feel?”

“I’d want to kiss you right about now.”

She thought for a moment.

“Leslie? Would you--I mean, it’s not just me, right?”

“No. It’s not just you.”

He smiled. “Okay. Good.”

And they stood there, under cover of darkness and trees, respecting the stupid rule. For a few moments, anyway. But soon Leslie absently realized that they had become somewhat entwined, and her forearms were wound against Ben’s, palms against the crook of his elbows.

“Oh, screw it,” she said, shooting her hands to his waist just as his hands slid behind her head.

So _this_ was a kiss, a real one. It was the salt on his lips--and hers too, probably; it was his skin slightly rough with stubble against her cheek; it was noses pressed together and keeping her head tipped back until she felt dizzy.

The most blue-blooded, genuinely royal prince in the world couldn’t possibly be any better at kissing.

Reluctantly, she let her lips leave his. Ben slid his hands to her bare shoulders and rested them there.

“Or you could keep pretending to be a prince,” she suggested. “I mean, for as long as it takes for us to decide whether this would turn into something real. It would give us more time.”

It was a great idea, maybe one of her best, but Ben shook his head.

“I don’t think I’d be very good at keeping up the facade. Especially since I already work in the palace. Someone’s going to recognize me at some point.”

Much as Leslie was tempted to suggest they stay on this island forever, or fly somewhere even farther away, she knew she couldn’t really leave her city, or her father. And she couldn’t really lie to him, or to the people. Not for a prolonged period of time; not about something this important.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing Ben’s hand so she could lead him back to the carpet. “Let’s go get a dumb rule overturned.”

***

The carpet took a direct flight back to Agrabah, and while part of Ben wished the carpet was flying anywhere else in the world, he knew he couldn’t run off with the princess after only spending one evening in each other’s company. She wouldn’t leave her father, not under ordinary circumstances, and definitely not at a time when the palace treasury was in crisis and the royal vizier was, as Leslie put it, “kind of scary and controlling,” an assessment with which Ben wholeheartedly agreed. So they took their journey back as an opportunity to plan what they would say to the Sultan, and how they might get him to change his mind.

Really, though, the flight was pretty pleasant. Making plans suited the princess. She glowed every time she thought of a new, brilliant idea--and she had a lot of brilliant ideas. It was a little bit surprising how many ideas she had, considering that she was the Sultan’s daughter and everyone knew the Sultan was set in his ways. Why hadn’t he let Leslie take more control over palace affairs, he wondered? She could probably make quite a bit of difference.

And in between each of her brilliant ideas, she would relax against him, snuggling close and calm until the next one came and lit her up like lightning.

By the time the palace came back into view, the sun was halfway over the horizon, promising another day of intense heat.

“Do you want to sleep first?” Leslie asked. Closer to home, her voice was tinged with a nervousness that hadn’t been there before. “Or should we just go to my father straight away? Maybe we should take naps first.”

Nothing in her demeanor indicated she was the slightest bit tired, so though the insides of Ben’s eyelids had started to feel like sandpaper about four hundred dunes ago, he shook his head. Besides, he couldn’t possibly sleep well without knowing, one way or another, whether he’d ever be allowed to see Leslie again.

“Let’s talk to him right away.”

She nodded. “We’ll have to find him first. He’s a pretty early riser, but he’s always off somewhere in secret at this time of day.”

“But you will be able to find him, right?”

“Of course.” She gave his knee a quick squeeze. “I know all his hiding places. Carpet, go to the east wing first.”

Sure enough, they found the Sultan in the first place they looked--though Ben wasn’t sure the royal dining room counted as secret, regardless of whether or not it was supposed to be private. The carpet took them through an open window, dropped them onto the floor with as much ceremony as it could manage, and stood at attention.

From the far end of an endless wooden table, a short, stocky man with a prodigious mustache appraised them. Ben had met him the day before, of course, but this felt different.

“Leslie,” he said, with a curt nod.

She nodded back. “Father.”

“Prince Benjamin.”

“Er...hello.” Prince. Right. He was still dressed as one. Faced with a real, genuine sultan, he suddenly felt even more of an impostor than he previously had. Inside his shoes, his feet itched. “Good morning, Your Highness.”

“Neither of you was invited to join me here.” The Sultan remained motionless as they approached his end of the table. One hand gripped a large haunch of meat. “This is the time of day when I attend to my affairs in private.”

On further consideration--now that he was beginning to form the impression that interrupting the Sultan’s breakfast was akin to high treason--

“Father,” she started, “there’s something I need to discuss with you.” When the Sultan failed to answer, she plowed on. “It can’t wait. It’s about the rule.”

“What rule?” The words rang out from the back of the dining room, clear and precise, a voice Ben knew only too well. It was the royal vizier. Tammy the First glided over to them, her feet silent on the polished tile floor, her steps punctuated by sharp taps from her snake’s-head staff.

“The marriage rule.” Leslie’s fists flew to her hips as she drew herself to her fullest height and looked straight into her father’s eyes. “I want you to repeal it. I want to be able to marry whomever I want.”

“That’s not possible.”

But the Sultan hadn’t spoken. Those words came from the royal vizier.

“No, that’s not possible,” echoed the Sultan, his voice strangely flat.

“Why isn’t it possible?” Leslie demanded.

“Because it isn’t,” said Tammy the First. “The rule is that you must marry a prince. The rule is that you must marry a prince very quickly.” She turned her gaze to Ben, who felt the sweat trickling down his back turn icy. “A suitable prince. This one is not.”

The parrot shook her head. “He’s a real stick in the mud, this one.”

“What? No.” Leslie clutched at his arm, pulling him a step closer. “He’s suitable.”

Tammy the First laughed, high and clear. “Princess,” she drawled, “he isn’t a prince. He’s a nobody from the palace treasury.”

“I know he isn’t a prince,” Leslie said, turning to shoot him a dazzling smile that turned all his insides to mushy figs. “But he isn’t a nobody. That’s why we want to change the rule.”

“Well, Leslie, I’m afraid you’ll just have to accept that changing the rule is impossible.”

As the two women began to argue--heatedly on Leslie’s side, coolly on Tammy’s--Ben let his eyes wander over to the Sultan. That roasted haunch of meat still hovered, somewhat improbably, in midair. But surely it was heavy? It had to be heavy; it was practically half a cow. So then why did the meat seem to be floating?

And why wasn’t the Sultan, who had a reputation for not tolerating idle small talk amongst his small council, perfectly content for his daughter and his vizier to be arguing during his private breakfast time?

With a bang and a whinny, the hall doors flew open and Leslie’s pony galloped in. Moments later, something small and furry landed on Ben’s shoulder. “Tom,” he breathed. “You’re a monkey again.”

Tom nodded furiously, then chattered a few syllables into Ben’s ear and pointed at Tammy the First.

“I don’t get it.”

Smacking a hand to his forehead, the monkey rolled his eyes, clambered down Ben’s leg, and crept over to the royal vizier in an exaggerated tiptoe. Then he pointed at the snake’s head staff.

How had he not seen this before? How had he failed to notice the glowing red lights coming out of the snake’s eyes, forming a direct path to the Sultan’s? Or that the Sultan’s pupils had turned to spirals? Well, he knew the answer to that, if he was being honest with himself; he’d been too entranced by Leslie to notice that the Sultan was entranced by the royal vizier. Much more entranced. He was unmoving, seated at the table with the meat still hoisted in midair, literally a living statue...

 _Literally_.

If Leslie could keep the argument going for long enough, distracting the vizier, he might have a shot. He had a magic lamp and two wishes left.

Slowly, Ben removed his hat, careful to see that the vizier wasn’t paying attention to him. It was too bad Tom had changed back into a monkey; if there was an elephant in the room, he could have hidden behind it.

Leaving the lamp inside the hat, Ben rubbed his fingers along the metal and prayed that the genie would emerge quietly.

That didn’t happen.

“Benjamin!” announced the genie, pointing at him. “Princess Leslie! Vizier, nice to see you. Sultan Ron, I’m afraid I can’t recommend that much meat at breakfast. You really should have more fruits and whole grains. How do you feel about figs?”

“Genie--”

“Now, Ben, we already discussed this. It’s not prudent for me to repeal the rule. I would strongly suggest against you wishing for that--”

Dimly, Ben heard Tammy tell the parrot to fetch her the lamp.

“Ugh, no. I don’t want to work,” groaned the parrot. She flew to Ben anyway, and started clawing at his hands.

He wouldn’t let go, though. He couldn’t. Ignoring the pain in his knuckles, he called “I wish for you to strip the royal vizier of her power over the Sultan,” making sure to enunciate every syllable clearly over the parrot’s squawking.

The genie aimed two finger guns at the vizier and sent out a short zap. Ben looked at the Sultan, who blinked twice, glared at them all in turn, and cast his meat aside. “Right,” he said. “Leslie, my office. Now.”

Too late, Ben realized he should have made a less specific wish. It was his last conscious thought. Tammy had already turned her snake’s-head staff to him, and when its glowing red eyes met his...well, it seemed like a good idea to give the lamp to the vizier’s parrot. Tom bared his teeth and lunged, but the parrot merely flew away, indifferent to him, and deposited the lamp in its new master’s hands.

“Hey.” Leslie stood right next to him now, but she was wrapped in smoke, and her voice was muffled, as though she spoke through a pillow. “Ben. Snap out of it. Ben.”

“The lamp is now mine.” Tammy the First’s voice came in loud and clear. “Genie, for my first wish, I demand that you bring me Ronald’s gold.”

Abruptly, the Sultan rose from his breakfast table. “Genie, don’t listen to her. She’s evil.”

“I’m afraid the treasury is empty, Vizier,” said the genie.

“ _Ben_.” Something pinched his rear end, but he didn’t feel inclined to react. “Come on. I need you focused.”

“I am aware that the treasury is empty,” said the vizier. “If the gold was in the treasury, I would simply have removed it myself. Since it is not, my first wish is that you locate it and bring it to me.”

For some reason, this made the genie burst into tears. “I’m very sorry to have to do this,” he sobbed, throwing himself into Ben’s arms. “It is a measure of my servitude that I must obey the orders of my master.”

“Wait, you’re a slave?” Leslie interjected. “Ben, did you know the genie was a slave? You have to wish for his freedom.”

To a certain extent, her words made sense. But the genie belonged to Tammy the First now, and that made more sense. “I can’t,” he said, simply. Didn’t Leslie understand? She had to understand. The kingdom would be much better off if Tammy controlled all the royal gold. And he couldn’t wish for the genie’s freedom because he wasn’t the genie’s master. “We should just go with it, you know?”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Leslie muttered. Two small hands gripped the princely robes he still wore, one on each side of his waist, and pulled him forwards. He went with the pressure, dipping his head in response to the sudden change in balance...and, at the low end of the parabola, found her lips, which pressed into his.

Whatever was happening, it felt good. So he went with it.

Somehow, the princess’s lips made sense, or rather, it made sense that he should be kissing them. Kissing the princess made much more sense than lots of other things--failing to kiss her, for instance, or giving all the kingdom’s gold to the royal vizier.

Suddenly, Ben became uncomfortably aware that there was a monkey on Leslie’s shoulder, just in his line of vision, and that it was miming being violently ill.

He pulled back. “Cut it out, Tom.”

Tom gave one final _blech_ and then scampered down Leslie’s back to the floor.

“Thank god that worked,” Leslie said. “It usually does in stories, but I wasn’t sure about real life.”

“What just happened?”

“Tammy hypnotized you. And then she stole the lamp and ordered the genie to give her all our gold. I broke the hypnosis by kissing you. Your monkey’s grossed out and he’s kind of being a jerk about it. And now--” she pointed out the window--“the genie’s out there searching for gold. Ben, what are we going to do when he finds it? Where’s the gold hidden? How do we keep her from getting it?”

“You can’t stop me,” remarked Tammy the First, rather calmly. “I own the lamp. I have two wishes left.”

“Guess whether we’ll be using them to murder you,” said the parrot.

“Don’t say murder, dear. It doesn’t suit. Too bloody of a word.”

Ben leaned over and whispered in Leslie’s ear. “I don’t know where the gold is.”

“You work in the treasury.”

“Someone’s been robbing the treasury. At night, when I’m not there. I genuinely have no idea where the money has gone.”

“Great,” Leslie groaned. “So what do we do?”

“We fight,” said a low, quiet voice in Ben’s ear. He jumped backwards a few inches. When had the Sultan snuck up on them? “We get the lamp back and free the genie. It’s the only solution.”

He was right, obviously. Ben pressed a hand to his temple anyway. “Yeah, and how are we going to fight a vizier who can harness the genie’s powers?”

“There are several basic self-defense techniques that should prove effective.”

“I don’t think they’re going to work in this situation,” Ben warned, but it was too late. The Sultan had already set across the room. He pushed back his sleeves, revealing surprisingly well-muscled forearms, and marched straight towards Tammy.

“No, Ronald.” Her voice was calm, almost bored, as she struck him with another beam from the snake’s-head staff.

“Yeah, you show ‘em,” said the parrot. “I’m gonna chew his eyebrows off now. Is that cool?”

“As you wish.”

Rousing sobs echoed through the hall, followed closely by their source--the genie, his arms full of treasure. “This is just the first lot.” He dumped what must have been several hundred pounds of gold on the table. “I’ll be back.” And he flew out the window again.

Tammy moved towards the table. “That’s excellent work, genie,” she said, picking up a coin in her long, pale fingers.

“Now!” screeched Leslie.

“Now what?”

But she hadn’t been talking to him. At her word, the pony broke into a full gallop. Though his tiny hooves slipped on the polished tile floor, he still managed to close his teeth around Tammy’s snake’s-head staff, dragging it from her grip as he scampered away.

“Smash it!” Leslie yelled. Obediently, Li’l Sebastian placed the staff on the floor and pawed at it, battering the snake’s head until the rubies of its eyes were strewn across the floor. The Sultan sat up, sending Tammy’s parrot careening from his eyebrows, and Ben knew the vizier’s powers had been broken.

Tammy’s eyes flashed. “This isn’t wise behavior on either of your parts. I will have you both banished to the kingdom of Eagletonia. Genie, return to me.”

From very, very low to the ground, something tugged on the ankle of Ben’s pants.

He looked down to see a grinning Tom, holding forth the magic lamp.

“How did you--” he asked the monkey. But _how_ wasn’t important right now. “Never mind.” And he rubbed the lamp.

Almost immediately, Ben found himself engulfed in an enormous, wet, blue hug.

“Do it,” Leslie called from the other side of the room, where she was tending to her father.

Ben nodded once. “Genie, I wish for your freedom.”

What he got was a bigger hug, more sobbing, and the genie’s broken bronze chains landing on his foot.

He stood on the polished tile floor, tried to ignore the pain in his toe, and gave the genie a tentative pat on the back. “Let it out, I guess?”

***

Later that morning--but not too much later--Leslie prepared herself to broach the subject again. Tammy the First had been permanently banished from Agrabah, and escorted from the palace by several large armed guards, threatening that she had been there when the Sultan was born, and she would be there when he died. The former genie had sprinted away on his new legs (intent on trying to run to the moon). Perhaps most importantly, her father had finally eaten.

Before she went to the Sultan, though, she made a detour to the treasury room. They’d arranged it on the flight home last night, a secret meeting place in case anything went wrong, and while things hadn’t exactly gone _wrong_ , they hadn’t exactly gone right so far, either.

She pushed the door open with an unfortunately loud creak, and turned her eyes to the table where Ben would be sitting.

Someone was sitting at the table, but it wasn’t Ben.

“Leslie.”

Leslie gulped. “Father.”

“How long have you been seeing Ben?”

Under her father’s stern, unyielding gaze, her first instinct was to deny that she’d ever seen Ben in all her life. But--no. She stopped the words before they left her mouth. For one, she’d already started to tell her father that she’d been seeing Ben, before that morning’s fight. For another, Ben had slipped inside the treasury room and grabbed her gently around the waist.

“Not now,” she whispered, elbowing him in the ribs. He looked up, stiffened, and immediately dropped his hands.

“So.” Her father leaned back, folding his arms across the chest. “How long have you two been seeing each other?”

“Just since last night,” Leslie said.

“And how long have you known he isn’t a genuine prince?”

“Also since last night.”

Silence fell, save for Tom the monkey, who leapt to the table and began polishing gemstones with a soft cloth. At a single look from the Sultan, though, Tom stopped moving.

There was only ever so long that Leslie had been able to hold her tongue, and sure enough, words began rushing out before she was fully ready for them. “I know you really want me to marry a prince--I mean I know there’s a rule and everything--but--”

Her father held up a hand. “Stop talking. I don’t care if you marry a prince.”

“But neither of us have liked any of the princes, and--wait, what?”

“I do not care whether the man you marry is a prince. I never have. I don’t care whether you marry anyone at all, quite frankly.”

A strange buzzing noise filled Leslie’s ears, and her knees went very wobbly. “You don’t?”

“As of your next birthday, you’re a grown woman. You’re already old enough to make your own decisions. It’s none of my business.”

“But all the suitors,” she muttered.

“Tammy’s idea.”

“But the rule,” said Ben.

Her father shrugged. “Am I Sultan, or am I Sultan? From now on, the princess can marry whomever she chooses. Or no one at all.”

She reached for Ben’s hand and found it, and they gripped each other tightly. But when she looked up at his face, she found his brow still furrowed.

“I don’t understand. Why would the royal vizier be invested in preserving the monarchical dynasty? If Leslie marries a commoner, it would be much easier for her to make a grab for power.”

“Tammy wasn’t interested in political power. She was interested in accumulating personal wealth.”

“Which this palace was losing at an incredible rate of speed.” He turned to Leslie. “She wanted you to marry a prince--”

“Because princes are rich,” she finished.

“But Tammy wasn’t stealing from the treasury,” Ben said. “So who was?”

“No one was stealing from the treasury. A man cannot steal what is rightfully his.”

 _“You_ moved the gold?” Ben dropped Leslie’s hand so quickly he practically threw it, and cradled his head. “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Do you know how many times I’ve almost been fired in the past few months? Or beheaded?”

“Because I do not trust treasuries or the people employed in them.”

That was her father, Leslie thought ruefully. Her father, who was reaching under the table for a stack of scrolls.

“I may have been wrong.”

“Wrong how?” she asked, taking a tentative step forward so she could see better. The scrolls were filled with numbers, made in a tiny, neat hand.

Ben had stepped forward too. “My records. You’ve been reading my records?”

“You have a good head for numbers, son.” He extended a hand. “I’d like for you to take charge in here. You’ll be a real asset in managing the city.”

“Oh.” He blinked, apparently unsure of how to respond. “Well, yeah. Okay. Of course I will.”

“Just keep an eye on that monkey.”

“Tom,” Ben said, warningly. The monkey rolled his eyes, heaved his shoulders, and returned a large emerald to the pile. “That’s better.”

After her father left, giggling, to evict the current occupants from what would be Ben, Tom, and the flying carpet’s new rooms, Leslie turned to the man she would be allowed to marry someday, when and if she decided she wanted to. She definitely wanted to kiss him right now, so she took advantage of their solitude and did that very thing, before her father or Tom could come back.

“Can I still call you my handsome prince?”she asked.

Ben smiled. “You shouldn’t.”

“In private.”

“Well...” He swallowed. “If you want, I guess.” And he kissed her, slowly and thoroughly, until a loud bang at the door made them both jump back.

The Sultan’s mustache twitched. “Here,” he said, holding out several shovels. “Let’s go dig up the rest of the gold.”

Ben looked a little dismayed, but she figured he’d cheer up soon enough. “Come on,” she said, tugging the hand that wasn’t gripping the shovel. “Let’s get to work. We have the whole rest of the day to work. Isn’t that exciting?”

An hour into digging--Li’l Sebastian pawing helpfully at the ground, Ben’s carpet zipping back and forth with all the treasure, and Tom completely useless--they were joined by a small red bird, which landed on Leslie’s shoulder and sighed loudly.

“Tammy’s lame now,” she groaned. “So I want to stay here, if that’s cool.”

***

And they all lived happily ever after...

***

The palace doors swung open to reveal a small, dark-haired woman wearing tightly fitted robes and oddly shaped spectacles that reminded Leslie of a cat’s eyes. “Oh, hi, folks,” said the woman, giving everyone a little wave. “I heard you were in the market for a royal vizier around here.”

Leslie wasn’t sure whether they really needed a new royal vizier, but--she glanced backwards--her father seemed enamored with the woman. Already?

“We’ve had one by your name before,” he said, when the mysterious woman whispered into his ear. “You’ll have to be Tammy the Second.”

***


End file.
